People’s earliest childhood memories they can recall are on average from just two-and-a-half years old, according to a new study published in the journal Memory.
It was previously held that the earliest memories are from three-and-a-half years old. Research on earliest memories dates back to the late 1800s, when it was first noted that most adults lack memories from the first 3 to 4 years of their lives, a phenomenon later termed infantile or childhood amnesia.
The evidence for the lower age of earliest memories is presented in a new 21-year study, which followed on from a review of already-existing data.
“When one’s earliest memory occurs, it is a moving target rather than being a single static memory,” explained lead author Dr Carole Peterson, a childhood amnesia expert from Memorial University of Newfoundland.
“Thus, what many people provide when asked for their earliest memory is not a boundary or watershed beginning, before which there are no memories. Rather, there seems to be a pool of potential memories from which both adults and children sample.
“And, we believe people remember a lot from age two that they don’t realise they do.
“That’s for two reasons. First, it’s very easy to get people to remember earlier memories simply by asking them what their earliest memory is, and then asking them for a few more. Then they start recalling even earlier memories – sometimes up to a full year earlier. It’s like priming a pump; once you get them started its self-prompting.
“Secondly, we’ve documented those early memories are systematically misdated. Over and over again we find people think they were older than they actually were in their early memories.”
Dr Peterson has conducted studies on memory for over two decades, focusing on the ability of children and adults to recall their earliest years.
This latest study reviewed 10 of her research articles on childhood amnesia followed by analyses of both published and unpublished data collected in Dr Peterson’s laboratory since 1999. This comprised 992 participants, and memories of 697 participants were then compared to the recollections of their parents.
The finding shows that children’s earliest memories date from before when they think it happened, backed up by their parents.
‘Telescoping’ memories
The evidence from this research to move our potential memory clock is “compelling”. For example, when reviewing a study which interviewed children after two and eight years had passed since their earliest memory they were able to recall the same memory, however in the subsequent interviews reported a later age as to when they occurred.
“Eight years later many believed they were a full year older. So, the children, as they age, keep moving how old they thought they were at the time of those early memories,” explained Dr Peterson, from the Department of Psychology at Memorial University.
The finding is due to something in memory dating called ‘telescoping’, she believes.
“When you look at things that happened long ago, it’s like looking through a lens.
“The more remote a memory is, the telescoping effect makes you see it as closer. It turns out they move their earliest memory forward a year to about three and a half years of age. But we found that when the child or adult is remembering events from age four and up, this doesn’t happen.”
She says, after combing through all of the data, it clearly shows that people recall much more of their early childhood, a lot farther back, than they think they do, and helping to access those memories is fairly simple.
“When you look at one study, sometimes things don’t become clear, but when you start putting together study after study and they all come up with the same conclusions, it becomes pretty convincing.”
This lack of clarity is a limitation of her research, she acknowledges, one which is also common to all research done to-date in the subject area.
“What is needed now in childhood amnesia research are independently confirmed or documented external dates against which personally derived dates can be compared, as this would prevent telescoping errors and potential dating errors by parents,” Dr Peterson said.
She is currently doing research on this with verified dating, both in her laboratory and elsewhere to further confirm the answer to this long-debated question.
Source: Taylor & Francis Group
Journal information: Peterson, C., (2021) What is your earliest memory? It depends. Memory. doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2021.1918174.
